Meditations on Natural Philosophy
by callalili
Summary: The Force Unleashed: "It is not for nothing that she was the youngest cadet to be accepted into the Corulag Academy—Juno remembers the generalized laws of gravity as well as she remembers her name, rank, and serial number." Juno/Starkiller
1. Law of Universal Gravitation

It is such a long, long way into the heart of a star.

They are falling. They have been falling for some time now, but only in the past few minutes has the acceleration become so extreme as to be noticeable above the gravity generators of the _Empirical_; there is a definite tilt in the floor now, perhaps a five degree slant forward toward the sun rising up to meet them, and even the officers are beginning to panic.

Someone has put this ship on a collision course with a star.

It is not for nothing that she was the youngest cadet to be accepted into the Corulag Academy—she can calculate hyperspace jumps with all the accuracy of a dedicated navicomputer; she can perform computational linear algebra in her head; she can recite, at the drop of a hat, all seven corollaries to the Third Fundamental Theorem of Wave-Particle Duality. They haven't been feeding her recently, but Juno remembers the generalized laws of gravity as well as she remembers her name, rank, and serial number—_six point six seven four two eight times ten to the negative eleven_—

She leans back against the cold metal walls of her cell and closes her eyes. There are voices, on the loudspeaker, ordering the blast doors to be closed and locked and magnetically sealed; there is frenzied shouting as someone announces the escape pods are all malfunctioning.

—_estimate mass of the sun at one point nine nine times ten to the thirtieth; estimate mass of Empirical as negligible in context—_

Branded a traitor to the Empire, after all this time, and she would die with the rest of them in a conflagration of plasma and molten metal.

—_acceleration at nine point eight one meters per second squared, estimate current velocity as five thousand meters per second relative to system—_

Juno runs the calculations through her head, carefully, and comes to the conclusion that they will die in thirteen minutes. It is much further than that to the sun, of course, but there is only so much heat that the _Empirical _can take before it begins to melt.

Six months, in this jail cell, and she will die in it. She has always thought she would be shot down over a war zone, her ashes sent back to her father and posthumous medals draped over her grave. Perhaps it is the Empire who had betrayed her. A perilous time to have an epiphany, to be sure, but she supposes it is better late than never. Has Vader decided that this entire ship is full of traitors? She has always been faithful. He hand-picked her for the Rogue Shadow—

Something has malfunctioned.

Juno struggles to her feet despite a wave of dizziness; sirens are blaring all along the _Empirical_. They aren't close enough for the sun to be affecting their systems yet, unless she has misestimated the melting point of steel by several hundred degrees. No, it isn't a system malfunction—dimly, through the newly-erected laser field, she can see a figure approaching.

Her breath flies out of her. _Starkiller_. Impossible.

No, she quickly corrects herself—improbable. Like—like—high energy atomic states come to mind, but she is too dizzy to think straight. His lightsaber is a vivid blaze of blue against the gray of the ship and the white of the stormtroopers' armor. Wasn't it red?

Nine minutes until general system failure. The floor is approaching a fifteen degree tilt. He has come back. For her.

The laser field comes down and the officers panic. Even through her blurring vision she can tell it is him; no one else has quite the ruthless liquid grace to their movements that he does. She closes her eyes. Seven minutes; six and a half—

The force field disappears and Juno goes tumbling gracelessly to the ground. There is a hand on her cheek. She opens her eyes. "Juno," he says, and swings her into his arms as though she weighed nothing; there are new scars on his skin.

She spreads her fingers across the broad expanse of his shoulders. She whispers, "They told me you were dead—"

"It doesn't matter," he tells her. "None of that matters. I'm leaving the Empire."

She believes him.

Four minutes.

He runs.


	2. Fundamental Thermodynamic Relation

It is always chilly on the _Rogue Shadow_, except in the engine rooms where it's uncomfortably warm, and Juno wishes that the regulation jackets were a bit thicker because she is _cold_.

And then she wonders why she's wearing a regulation jacket at all. They are fugitives from the Empire; there is no one here to upbraid her for letting her hair down or wearing a green shirt instead of a gray one. There is no one here at all.

Except Galen, who doesn't care, and PROXY, who doesn't really count.

Suddenly impatient with herself, Juno pulls off the jacket and tosses it onto the co-pilot's chair. She remembers a fragment of wisdom from her first-year chemistry class on Corulag and smiles to herself—_the entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time_—

But not in so many words, of course. At the time it was symbols scrawled across a projection screen in the lecture hall, two-hundred students in a room all typing furiously into their datapads; the change in entropy with respect to time is always greater than or equal to zero, the professor said, only in calculus it is not so unwieldy as that. In calculus, all of thermodynamics can be summed up in six neat equations—five, really, if you consider that one of them is a direct corollary of another.

Defiantly, and feeling rather silly about it, Juno reaches up and unclips her hair as well.

It's even colder without her jacket. She picks it up and wanders out of the cockpit; perhaps there is something else for her to wear? PROXY is a droid of course, and Galen doesn't seem to notice the cold. And her wardrobe is severely limited. A laugh bubbles out of her. Perhaps she can go shopping when they dock on Nar Shadda.

"What's so funny?"

She hasn't seen him sitting there. He's fiddling with his lightsaber again, restlessly, and she says, "I'm cold," as though that explains anything. But he smiles at her anyway.

"You can borrow my jacket," he offers.

All things tend toward equilibrium—heat, entropy, interpersonal relationships. Perhaps even people; Galen has been restless lately, and she would not say that she knows him well but Juno thinks it is because there is no Empire now, for them. Chaos increases; military delineations break down. He is not so unapproachable as he was before. "Thank you," she says.

"How long—"

"Sixteen hours and thirty-two minutes until we reach Nar Shadda space," she replies, and his smile is rueful because he knows just as well as she how restless and uncertain he is.

He is shy, she thinks. He is deadly with a lightsaber and utterly silent when he moves; but he is shy, because Darth Vader is not the best role model for learning how to make friends. Is that heat or entropy or energy? Or perhaps no one has formulated an accurate model for emotions; he can be heartbreakingly sweet sometimes, and it is incongruous against the scars.

Uncertainty, like chaos, tends toward a maximum. Juno runs her fingers through her hair and wonders absently if he finds her attractive.

"PROXY can show you where it is," he is saying, and Juno realizes that he is speaking of jackets, and heat, and why the _Shadow _is always cold even when the hyperdrive and stealth systems are fully engaged.

Perhaps they will find direction when they find Kota.

"All right," Juno says.

Entropy is always increasing—

But they are not in a closed system.


	3. Geometry, Neoclassical

There is a proof, lovely in its elegance, regarding the three sides of a right triangle.

She is high in orbit above Kashyyyk, rotating around the skeletal construct that is not yet the Skyhook, and this theorem comes to her because the ship and the Skyhook and Starkiller make up the points of a right triangle. How far is it to his position? How fast can she make it? When will he call her in for extraction?

This last question is really the only one that Juno is interested in, because the ship computer has already solved the other two. She worries about him, when he is out on these missions, which is silly because he trusts her to fly his ship so she should trust him to take care of himself. But Starkiller is her only link to anything these days and she isn't quite sure what she'd do if he were gone—get roaring drunk with General Kota, maybe. But she tries not to think of these things. It makes her anxious. She goes through the proof in her mind instead—once, twice—because Galen is fighting Ozzik Sturn down on the planet's surface and she does not want to think of him being shot at.

_—if one side is held constant, then the rate of change between the other two is proportional to their lengths—_

Something has exploded. The sensor readings from Galen's armor are beeping at her madly from the console; six years of military training and one ancient proof keep her voice cool and professional as she toggles the comm. "Eclipse to Starkiller. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." His voice comes crackling across the connection; he sounds slightly winded. "Sturn tossed something at me."

What have they been throwing around? Barrels of explosives? Juno presses her lips together and rechecks the Skyhook. He has taken out three of the seven mooring pins, and now there is a decided tilt to the structure—

No longer a right triangle, she thinks, and so the theorem does not hold. In any case neoclassical geometry has never been her favorite subject. She much prefers the complexities of hyperspace.

Four pins remaining. Three pins. Two.

It took her two semesters to realize she didn't want to become an engineer—too much geometry, for one—but during that time she learned quite a bit about structural integrity. Mostly about how to undermine it. It comes in useful now, when the Skyhook begins to collapse and Starkiller finally—_finally_—calls her down to retrieve him—

She is relieved beyond belief when he requests pickup. The Skyhook is shattering around him when she sets the _Rogue Shadow_ down on the surface of Kashyyyk, but Galen does not seem to notice, only walks onboard as though there were not flaming pieces of debris falling down about them. "Alderaan," he tells her. His shirt is torn and bloody; he is bleeding from a cut to his cheek.

She wants to ask him, _Are you all right?_

But he is already walking away, tugging his ruined shirt over his head as he goes. She wishes he would talk to her. Vader's secret apprentice is not, perhaps, the most sociable of people—but Juno is lonely, and so (she thinks) is he.


	4. Geometry, Hyperspatial

There is a proof regarding the three sides of a right triangle, but it is only true in an Euclidean plane.

Juno is a pilot because she wants to be; she could have been an officer but she loves the thrill of feeling a spacecraft beneath her control, the dizzying pace of sub-light acceleration, the subtle time-space shift of reality in a hyperspace jump. They'd wanted her for engineering but she'd gone into the military instead; she likes the challenge. Engineering, she'd discovered, is rather too sedate for her tastes.

She is calculating the shortest route to Alderaan. Hyperspace curves and twists upon itself; the three sides of a right triangle and each longer than the other two combined and yet shorter than either taken separately. It is impossible to calculate a set of orthogonal basis vectors for a hyperspace of any dimension higher than zero (which is the trivial case, anyway, and isn't very useful). The hyperspace that ships jump through is theorized to have anywhere between six and fourteen dimensions; a ship interacts with only five of these. Still, five dimensions shouldn't be taken lightly.

She is calculating the shortest route to Alderaan, but she doesn't think they'll be going there after all, because Starkiller and Kota are shouting at each other in the main cabin. So perhaps the calculations take her a bit longer than usual—five-dimensional hyperspace interactions aren't for the faint of heart—as she keeps the ship in orbit above Kashyyyk with all stealth systems engaged.

Galen comes stalking into the cockpit, slamming open the door with more force than is strictly necessary, and throws himself down on the co-pilot's chair. "We're going to Felucia," he tells her.

Juno glances at him. "Why the change in plans?"

"Kota's contact is there," he says. "He's been kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?"

He nods, looking out the window at the stars. "Shaak-ti's apprentice. She's gone mad."

She touches his shoulder; he jumps, his eyes flying to her, and she snatches her hand away. "I'm sorry," Juno says, embarrassed. "I was just wondering if you were all right—"

"I'm fine," he says—not that he ever answers otherwise, when she asks—and there is the oddest trace of wistfulness in his expression. "You startled me."

Vader isn't the cuddliest of parental figures, is he? Juno has forgotten. "I'm sorry," she says again.

"It's all right." He sounds sincere.

Juno taps in the coordinates for Felucia. Three jumps should take them there; seven would be shorter, but there's a black hole that would be tricky to get around—But they are probably in a rush. So she takes them out of orbit and primes the ship for the first jump, a short hop sideways across the galaxy—

The stars blur around them and the world outside becomes a swirling vortex of blue.

Galen is quiet. Juno is already inputting the commands for the next jump, but after a few minutes she glances at him again. "We should be there within twelve hours," Juno says. He nods, looking out into the vortex, and the shimmering blue is reflected in his somber dark eyes.

Something has happened on Kashyyyk.

Hyperspace is ever-shifting and convoluted, but it is still easier to compute five-dimensional spatial algorithms than to guess at what he's thinking; Juno frowns down at the route for the fourth jump and sighs to herself. At least she understands how hyperspace is defined—

"Juno," he says abruptly. "Tell me about your parents."

She looks at him, surprised. Galen says it with all the authority of an order—_take me to Nar Shadda, can you handle that?_—but she doubts that he knows how to ask any other way; there is that wistfulness, again, in his eyes. She doubts, too, that he even knows it's there.

"My mother was a teacher," she says, choosing her words carefully. "She died when I was—very young. My father was—is—very loyal to the Empire. It was why I joined." The fifth jump is tricky. Juno carefully plots a course around the black hole, the numbers clicking out beneath her fingers. "I haven't spoken to him in years," she adds. "I always feel as though I'm not living up to his standards."

"You're one of the top pilots in the galaxy." Starkiller sounds surprised. She cannot help but smile at the compliment. Well, of course she is; the Empire hasn't caught them yet, has it?

"Why do you ask?"

He is quiet again. "I was seven when Vader took me," he says at last. "My father—I—we lived on Kashyyyk. I don't remember it."

Does he wish he did? "I'm sorry," she offers.

He looks startled for a moment and glances at her, a slight furrowing in his brow as though he isn't sure how to respond. "Thank you?" he tries.

Vader isn't big on social niceties, either. Juno shrugs. "Well, I am," she says. Perhaps his father had loved him; perhaps he had been frightened when Vader had stormed Kashyyyk and brought him away. And Juno is a little sad for him, the boy he was and the man he might have been, but even so she discovers that she likes the way he smiles at her now.

* * *

A/N: People are telling me that the technical stuff is too complicated? I've tried turning it down so I hope that worked, but really it's always how I imagined Juno would think...

Thanks to everyone who reviewed! Sorry about the crazy math stuff!


	5. Chaos Theory

A/N: Because I had to write something, even though I am dying. Enjoy.

* * *

Life is a dynamical system, completely deterministic but so complex that the slightest changes in the initial variables can nudge it in an entirely different direction; still, like any system that seems chaotic (but isn't, really, if you have a large enough computer to calculate it all), patterns emerge after several hundred thousand iterations—fractals, basins of attraction, limit cycles—

Life is iterated in the stories that people tell—epics and poetry and fairy tales—painting—music—and patterns emerge—

Love.

Death.

Betrayal.

And Juno hugs her arms around herself and wishes, desperately, that she had seen this coming, because she hasn't. Maybe it would hurt if she had—but instead all she feels is emptiness.

"Juno," he breathes, and lets go of PROXY.

She wants to say, _Why are you doing this?_ But she is afraid that she already knows the answer.

She wants to say, _Tell me this isn't want it looks like_. But she is quite certain it is.

"You're still loyal to Vader," Juno says, numb. "After he branded me a traitor and tried to kill you—"

She should have seen this coming. If the flapping of a butterfly's wings can begin a hurricane half a world away, then what influence would a lifetime in Vader's service have? "After all of that," she whispers, "you're still his—his—"

She cannot say it.

"His slave?" Galen asks, his voice low and quiet.

They stare at each other for a long moment, PROXY peering on anxiously from behind him; it is Galen who finally looks away. "Juno—" he says.

But she doesn't want to hear it. It is cold, cold, cold on the _Rogue Shadow_ and it has nothing to do with the heating; chaos theory, Juno thinks—it is aptly named, because if there are patterns in the chaos _she_ certainly cannot make sense of it. The world is tilting around her. What is he thinking?

He would abandon her for this—and Juno wishes that he had abandoned her earlier, because she had lost her life and he'd returned it to her, and she does not think she can bear to have it torn from her a second time—

"The fate of the rebel alliance is in your hands." Her voice is steady, and beneath it all is the sound of the ship's engines idling; she is cold but perhaps it doesn't matter. Her life isn't hers anyway, is it? From the moment Vader picked her, she should have known. Seven pilots lost; _seven_. They were certainly not taking Starkiller on pleasure jaunts across the galaxy. "You will shape the future of the galaxy—not Vader, not Palpatine, _you_. Is this really what you want?"

She likes them. All of them; Kota with his good-natured grumbling and Bail Organa with his determination and cultured charm; Princess Leia, who is kindhearted and clever; and Galen—not the Sith, not the hunter, just the man who smiles at her from across the table at breakfast and offers her his jacket when she is cold—

He would abandon them all.

Some of this must have shown on her face, because he tries again. "Juno—"

But she isn't listening.

"I'll go input the coordinates for Raxus Prime," she tells him quietly. "That's where we're headed next, isn't it?" Where Vader has told them to go—

"_Juno—_"

But the door is sliding shut behind her as she goes.


	6. Applied Electromagnetism

A/N: Sorry I've been away so long--finals have thoroughly beaten me up. But I return! Like a non-void function. Anyway, for those of you following Guarded, expect an update early next week.

* * *

Juno is not the sort to cry.

She never has been, not even as a child; when her favorite toy broke she only swept up the pieces and neatly threw them out; when her mother died she had stood, dry-eyed, at the funeral, and watched the bare-branched trees stretching up against the bright sky. She did not cry when she left for the Academy; it was only another trip, wasn't it? She did not cry when she crash-landed on her first solo flight and broke her arm in two places; her arm would heal, wouldn't it? And there would certainly be other flights.

It would be foolish to cry over a boy who has broken her heart. So she doesn't.

Instead she fires up the sub-light engines and maneuvers them into the first jump through hyperspace (and Galen is pacing, pacing in the main cabin); she punches in the coordinates for Raxus Prime and the ship _jumps_—

He tries to speak to her, twice, or at least she thinks he tries; once he comes to find her in the cockpit and she uses the excuse to go to her bunk and catch a few hours of sleep (because _someone _should watch the ship, after all, and it might as well be him); the second time he corners her as she is coming out of her room later, hair wet from the shower and still feeling betrayed—she snaps at him, then, and tries not to see the look of bewildered hurt on his face as he backs away.

Juno drops him down on Raxus Prime. There is an Imperial shipyard there; he is to destroy it. She doesn't even know who he is betraying anymore, besides her—still, it is perhaps an even greater betrayal that her heart stops every time his comlink cuts out. What does she see in him, anyway? Her savior?

Kota tells her about the Force as they wait for the link to come alive again, and Juno makes slow, looping circles above the Imperial shipyard and thinks to herself that the Force sounds more like a religion than anything else. There are three physical forces in the universe but a grand unifying theory is still elusive; this Force, with its all-encompassing stretch and spiritual overtones, does not seem like a force at all. It seems like an uncaring god.

And then Galen pulls a star destroyer out of the sky.

Later, Juno will not remember the frantic maneuvers to move the _Rogue Shadow_ out of the way of the falling destroyer or the furious firefight she engages herself in to pull some of the TIE fighters off Galen's trail; she will not remember how Kota was shouting at her or her worry over PROXY. She remembers, instead, how her thoughts danced around and around the idea of the Force—

A force powerful enough to down a star destroyer; a force powerful enough to pull twenty-five million tons of titanium and steel (and a mish-mash of other alloys, Juno adds distractedly, just for accuracy's sake). It could be gravity but she has seen Galen shoot lightning from his fingertips so she goes with electromagnetism; she still isn't sure what this Force is or even that it's a separate incarnation from the other forces—but still. It must be something.

Twenty-five million metric tons, and twenty-six thousand kilometers in orbit above the planet surface—and the thrusters must have been firing madly in the opposite direction, Juno thinks; how had he even done it? Induced a magnetic charge in a star destroyer?

All that power, and what will he do with it? Fight the Empire?

After he has been in contact with Vader?

And Juno thinks, determinedly, of magnetic fields and shards of lightning, and when Galen limps onboard with PROXY she merely pulls the _Rogue Shadow_ back into orbit again and does not, does _not_ ask him if he's all right even as her heart is in her throat.

"Corellia," Starkiller tells her, and he looks as though he would like to say something more but Juno bends her head and busies herself with the hyperspace coordinates.

Twenty-five billion kilograms of steel; the force necessary to counteract the thrusters alone would have been incredible. Juno doesn't want to think about it but does, anyway, mulling over the numbers again and again in the solitude of her mind, and she is almost relieved when the secondary engine reports a minor malfunction. It's probably a wire or two that needs to be replaced, but still, Juno is glad for the distraction.

PROXY is out of commission, engaged in self-repair in the practice room; Kota can't fly a ship. Still, they are in hyperspace, so Juno leaves the ship on autopilot and goes to check on the engines.

He shoots lightning from his fingertips. However does he manage that?

It is so _cold_ on this ship, and Juno is tired of it. Even in the engine room—the secondary engine is off and the two primary ones aren't running at full power; they are in hyper-space, after all, and the ship's system doesn't require that much power to run, because really what is there but a few computers and a light or two in the wake-cycle—

He could destroy the Empire, if he liked, but instead he's still fighting for Vader—for _Vader_, of all people—and Juno does not know why. She presses her forehead against the soothing hum of the engine and wishes that she has some answers.

She closes her eyes and wonders what her life would be like if she had become an engineer.

Footsteps, purposefully loud; the click of the door as it opens. Juno straightens up hurriedly. She turns around and brushes her hair away from her face, and she is horrified to discover that her fingertips are wet; in front of _Starkiller_, of all people—

But he says nothing, only tilts his head and regards her, thoughtfully.

"I'm fine," Juno says, embarrassed. "It's not—" Her eyes are welling up again. She rubs her hand across them, and says, rather lamely, "Sorry."

"Juno," he murmurs, and then his hands are on her shoulders and he is pulling her toward him; he is warm and reassuringly solid, and Juno presses her cheek against his shoulder and takes a deep shuddering breath and does not cry.

It occurs to her that this is the first time he has ever touched her. It occurs to her that it might be the first time he has ever touched anyone since he was seven; this may very well be the bravest thing he has done in his life, and Juno is, for some reason, absurdly proud of him, even though the echoing hollowness in her chest makes it hard to breathe. Her fingers are tightfisted in the front of her shirt, and Juno does not cry even though she thinks she wants to.

He says her name again, like a question, and Juno is too tired to be embarrassed now, because thinking about him and the Force and the Empire is quite the mental exercise. "Vader," she says.

"He won't interfere," he says, and Juno pulls away and looks up at him because she isn't quite sure what he's doing; his arms are still around her, and she likes that, she thinks, because it is cold on the _Rogue Shadow_. "Trust me."

"I'm doing what's best," he says. "For both of us."

There is such earnestness in his eyes. He's a Sith, isn't he? Vader's apprentice? And yet he doesn't know the first thing about duplicity—

Juno breathes out, a long, ragged breath, and nods. "I don't want—" she says, and stops. What can she say? _I don't want to see you bend to Vader's will. I don't want you to betray the rebels._

And lightning flares up between them, cool, intense, and Juno shouldn't be surprised but is; she presses her lips together and looks up at him. _I don't want you to betray me_, she wants to say.

"I won't," Galen says, as though he understands.


	7. Statistical Inference

A/N: People have been asking me about how I plan to end this thing. Relax, guys, and trust me. I've got something cool planned. Have I led you astray so far?

* * *

They fly to Corellia.

How many people have fought the Empire? Dozens—hundreds—most of them, Juno thinks, have ended up dead or hunted. None of them have been successful.

Although that is a fairly useless observation to make. Of course none of them have been successful; the Empire is still in power, isn't it?

How many people have fought Darth Vader? He used to be a Jedi once, and he'd turned on them and killed them—

Juno does not know of enough examples to make up a suitably large sample size; still, the anecdotal evidence is worrying. She is afraid. She does not trust Vader; she doesn't see why Galen does, either—after all, he too has been betrayed, and in far worse a way than she. And _still_ Galen seems blind to the patterns of death and betrayal laid out before him which seem so clear to her eyes—

They fly to Corellia. Messages come in on the communications console, intercepted from ships all across the galaxy; everywhere people are marveling at the destruction of the construction yard on Raxus Prime. There are stories flying about of a new Jedi, young and powerful, someone who can serve as a beacon of hope to dissidents of the Empire.

Hope. People were always looking for heroes, Juno thinks dispassionately. They never seem to want to consider the statistics—they see the outliers, the courageous and the brilliant, and forget entirely that the intelligence quotient curve is normalized to have a mean at one hundred. Even when the mean is considered things like standard deviation go flying out the window completely. Juno has heard a theory that the human mind is not designed to properly analyze statistics. She believes it—based on anecdotal evidence, ironically enough, as she is hardly a biologist.

Outliers are anomalies. They don't last long, which worries Juno because Galen is an outlier if anyone is.

She takes them out of hyperspace as they approach the system. Galen comes to join her in the cockpit, looking tense and elated all at once; "How long?" he asks her.

"Another hour," she tells him, and swings around to look up at him. "Are you certain about this?"

"Yes," he says. "Of course."

He does not smile. He so rarely smiles, and Juno thinks wryly of outliers again as she fires up the sub-light engines and engages the stealth systems. "Are you ready?" she asks him.

"Yes," he says again.

She sets him down on Corellia when they arrive, him and Kota and PROXY, and they disappear into the swirling snow on the chilly planet as she pulls the ship back into orbit. She keeps an ear on the meeting progressing below from Galen's comlink; they are discussing ships and troop strategies, and she smiles at the excitement she hears in Galen's voice—

There is a blip on her radar screen.

Then another.

And another.

Fourteen Imperial ships drop their stealth cloaking on Corellia's surface.

Juno's heart stops. She grabs for her comlink; "Eclipse to Starkiller," she says, frantically maneuvering the _Rogue Shadow _back down for a landing. "Imperial ships approaching; I repeat, Imperial ships approaching. Do you copy?"

There is silence on the other end. Their connection has been lost. Juno tries Kota's connection, then PROXY's; none of them are answering.

The sensors inform her that there is shooting occurring down at the surface. Imperial ships. Where had they come from? Why are they here? How could they possibly know—

Galen—

She will not think it. She will not. Juno presses her lips together and brings the ship down as quickly as she can, tracing Galen's signal as she goes. Where is he? That can't be right; he's two hundred meters above elevation—no, he is _falling_—

She makes the roughest landing of her career, crashing down on the hard frozen ground and skidding haphazardly to a stop. The loading ramp has not fully opened yet but she is rushing down it anyway, her boots sliding on the snowy ground and her hand on her blaster; there is a crumpled figure at the bottom of the nearby cliff, and she ignores the freezing winds and _runs_.

There is a pulse beneath her fingertips (_outlier_, she thinks again) and he draws in a ragged breath and opens his eyes. "Juno—" he breathes.

"The ship," she says. "Can you walk?"

Stupid question—he has just fallen off a _cliff_—but as it turns out the answer is yes, and they limp back to the _Rogue Shadow_ as quickly as they can. Juno is almost afraid to ask what happened.

But he tells her anyway, without prompting.

"Vader lied," he says, sinking down into the co-pilot's chair.

Of course Vader lied; Vader always lies, doesn't he? It is _probable_ that he was lying—

But she hadn't figured it out, either, so she should not be blaming Galen who is more innocent than she. "Kota—"

"Captured. We can't stay here."

She nods. The _Rogue Shadow_ lifts off; she brings it out in a weaving circle behind the Imperial ships, cloaked all the while, and—because she does not know where else to go—sets the coordinates for Nar Shadda. "We jump to Nar Shadaa in twenty-four minutes," Juno says crisply. Then, when her comlink floats out of her pocket and drifts lazily across the cockpit, despite the artificial gravity of the ship—

"Galen?" He is leaning back in his chair, his eyes closed, his face set in tense lines. "What are you doing?"

"Meditating," he says, not opening his eyes. "Jedi can sometimes have visions of the future—"

It isn't just her comlink, it's is every unattached thing in the cockpit—electromagnetism, Juno thinks absently, because what else could have such a strong pull?—"Is it working?" she inquires.

"I don't know," Galen says wryly. "I've never tried being a Jedi before."

She takes this as her cue to be silent.

His eyes, when he opens them again, and fever-bright and gazing at something far beyond her seeing. "A space station," he murmurs, the objects slowly settling to the floor again. "A massive space station—Juno, the coordinates—"


	8. Theory of Everything

A/N: Apologies to everyone who is following this story. As you've probably noticed, my updates have gotten derailed lately; my life has been in turmoil and I hadn't had the inclination to write. But. Here is a chapter.

* * *

There is a force that holds the universe together, but no one knows what it is.

No. That isn't entirely true; everyone has their own theory. Jedi, like Kota, will call it the Force and smile mysteriously when asked about its nature; romantics will call it love, and make pyres in its name. Scientists, of course, have been searching for this force for centuries. There is gravity, there is electromagnetism, there are the nuclear forces; surely there must be something that ties all of them together?

There isn't.

Juno does not believe in any gods; she believes in the complexities of hyperspace jumps and the surety of a blaster in her hands—and a grand unifying force that holds the universe together sounds far too much like a god for her liking. Still, if there is a satisfactory proof for it, she will believe.

She believes in the Force, for example, though she is still not convinced it is the unification of all the forces; she believes in love, too, but _that_ hardly holds the universe together.

Hyperspace blurs and shifts before her eyes. "We are approaching the coordinates," Juno announces to the ship. "Galen, are you ready? We drop out of hyperspace in six minutes—"

"I'm ready," he says, appearing at her shoulder so quickly that she starts. "Sorry," he adds. "I could—feel it, somehow—even in hyperspace—"

The Force, again. Juno nods. "Are you certain about this?" she asks him.

Such earnestness in his eyes, like a boy saying _I'm sorry, I'm sorry_ after he has broken his mother's favorite vase—"The rebel leaders are there," Galen says. "I know it."

The ship skips out of hyperspace smoothly, easily, and then they are cruising through a system on the Outer Rim; directly above them Juno registers a massive object the size of a small moon. She maneuvers the ship around. The half-constructed Death Star looms before them, ominously, which is appropriate considering it's name—

She follows him out onto the boarding ramp as it unfolds. "Keep the ship cloaked and wait beyond scanner range," he orders, without looking at her, and there is something deadly in the way he walks—

Her heart is hammering against her ribs. "Will I see you again?" she asks.

"If I can free the rebels, they're going to need extraction," he says.

That isn't what she asked.

He is obfuscating and he knows it, because when he glances back at her there is the trace of a smile on his lips, despite everything; "Probably not, no," he admits.

She thinks, _How very brave_.

She thinks, _But I want to see you again._

Lightning again, crackling between them with such passionate intensity that Juno is surprised he doesn't see it; she may not see him again, ever, ever, and she is in love with him and he does not know—

Because he wouldn't presume, would he? And he may die and never know that _someone_ loved him, and that, really, is the one thing she cannot stand. Love does not hold the universe together. How can it? It is tearing her apart.

"Then I suppose I'll never have to live up to this," Juno says, with a bravado she does not feel, and there is a flash of startled wonder in his eyes as she pulls him towards her and kisses him—

And instead of saying _I love you_ or the thousand and one things he could have said, Galen pulls her against him and kisses her back; his fingers are on her cheek, her hair; his lips are warm and surprisingly soft—but then, he doesn't get much kissing done these days, does he?

_Come back_, she thinks. _Please come back—_

As first kisses go, it is quite heartbreaking.

Then he is gone, tumbling backward into the twisted labyrinth of aero-steel and titanium below, and his whispered _goodbye_ is still ringing in her ears even as he falls.

What are the chances that he'll go up against Darth Vader and win? What are the chances that she'll see him again?

The boarding ramp clicks shut beneath her feet. Juno presses her trembling fingers against her lips and wishes that she were not quite so good at probability.

Because, she thinks, it is quite probable that she loves him.

* * *

A/N: I am tempted to end this story right here, because, after all, this is a romance story and they have fallen in love, so what else is there but the ending, and everyone knows how the ending goes. I'm not even sure if I want to write the ending. Both are sort of depressing.

Let me know what you think.


	9. Temporal Concordance: Stalker

A/N: I couldn't make up my mind about the ending, so I wrote all of them. Take a break between each, or else you're liable to get a bit of mood whiplash.

* * *

Juno does not pace. That would be unprofessional, like crying; she sits in the pilot's seat and monitors the readings and keeps the ship in a wide, looping orbit out of the range of the Death Star's scanners. This is not because the Death Star's scanners are active. This is because she cannot stand the thought of drifting any closer to a distance where she would have to keep the ship stationary; not having anything to do, at this moment, would be unthinkable.

Perhaps they haven't even installed the scanners yet. It is still mostly unfinished, after all.

Galen, when he contacts her, sounds as detached as always. It isn't fair, Juno thinks, that he should go through all this unaffected while _she_ is sitting here on the _Rogue Shadow_ with her heart in her throat; it is not fair that he must go through this alone, it is not fair that she loves him, it is not fair that he could _die_ and she might never see him again—

But her voice, when she replies, is just as cool and professional as his. "Beyond that door is Palpatine's private viewing room," she tells him. "Are you ready?"

"Yes," Galen says.

And his comlink cuts out.

Frantic, Juno leans forward in her seat and tries to call him. But he has switched it off; there are no flashing diagnostics, there is no error report—not even the faint humming buzz between conversations. Dead, she thinks.

And, because she cannot think about that word, Juno turns back to the ship controls and brings the _Rogue Shadow_ in a sweeping path back down to the Death Star; the rebels will need extraction, after all, and Galen has asked her to do it—

She waits: a minute—five—fifteen—

Something explodes beneath her.

"Galen!" she gasps into the comlink, before remembering that it is dead; she tries it again, just in case, simply because she cannot _not_ try. There is no answer.

But in her mind she hears him, a long, drawn out cry of horror, and she _knows_ that something has gone terribly wrong. The ship shudders beneath her, not under her directive, and Juno scrambles to catch herself. No, _no_—they have been discovered, and it will all be for nothing—

She fires up the engines but there is something more powerful than the engines pushing down on the ship; they are going down, _down_, with terrible force—

Juno hears his screams in her mind as she loses consciousness

--

Galen is different when she sees him again.

They drag her from her dingy cell in the prison block up to Palpatine's audience chamber, but she does not notice any of this—not the guards, not the officials, not even Palpatine himself—she sees only Galen, who has changed but is still the same, beneath his mask and his new-forged body of steel and despair.

"Galen," she says, and her voice comes out in a whisper.

He approaches her. She cannot see his face, so she closes her eyes; but she can feel him, against her mind, and she does not flinch when the razor-blades of his fingers reach up to touch her cheek.

Palaptine's order echoes from very far away. She nearly does not hear it.

_Juno_, Galen says into her mind, _Juno—_

She does not cry. She has never cried.

There is the bleak misery of his mind against hers. There is the touch of cold steel against her skin.

She dies.

He loves her, so he makes it quick.

* * *

A/N: Seriously. Go walk around or something.


	10. Temporal Concordance: Sacrifice

A/N: Ending the second. (Should follow right on chapter 8.)

* * *

She does not know what to think when he doesn't come back.

Juno does not pace; that would be unprofessional, even now, when it is all over and the world (it seems) is celebrating; she stands here, before the bank of windows that looks out into the starry vastness of the universe, and feels very cold.

Still, it is a lovely view.

The Corellian system has one of the most complicated orbital patterns in the galaxy—the proximity of the planets, the size of the sun, the influence of the binary system nearby—all wreak havoc with the trajectory of these bodies. Still, it is a calculable havoc. She had memorized the basic patterns—once for her Astronomy and Navigation class at Corulag, and again, years later, when she had made a practice run from one end of the system to the other for a training exercise.

Two planets are moving toward each other. Alignment, Juno remembers, is rare; there are only a handful of times when such a thing happens. She recites them all, quietly, to herself.

She is still cold.

Which is strange. Because the room is not cold.

She thinks of the _Rogue Shadow_ and how it is always cold on that ship, except for that one too-brief moment in the engine room when Galen held her and she was warm; she remembers how cold it always was, but how he never seemed to feel it as much as she.

She had only ever kissed him once. It still does not seem fair.

A warm hand touches her shoulder. She turns.

"He's at last one with the Force," Kota says.

She wishes he weren't; selfish, perhaps, but Juno thinks that Galen would have agreed with her. She wraps her jacket tightly around herself and shivers. "You always knew who he was," she says. "Didn't you?"

It is not really a question. Kota is a Jedi.

"I suspected," he tells her.

"Then why did you help us?" A foolish question, but she cannot help herself.

Kota is silent for a moment.

He tells her, finally, that Galen had loved her. It is unhelpful; she had not needed Kota's words for her to know that, and she still does not have an answer, and Galen is still dead.

But it is a foolish question, so she does not press the issue.

--

There are speeches for him afterward—fine speeches by fine orators, spreading through the holonet like wildfire. Galen is a hero, they whisper; he is a martyr, he is a rebel, he was the very first champion of the New Republic. Juno is never quite sure what to make of these speeches.

She wishes he had not died. She misses him.

He had carried the thought of her to his death, and so she carries the memory of him now—a bright touch of fire blazing against the icy darkness of the universe—and it is sentimental nonsense, all of it, but Juno does not care.

It is cold there in the vast empty spaces between the stars—lovely and perilous—but he had gone forth unafraid, and she will not falter when she follows.


	11. Temporal Concordance: Singularity

A/N: Again, follows right on chapter 8. Did you take a walk?

* * *

The first-year professor in Quantum Theory likes to open his class with a story of a cat in a lead box with a Geiger counter; it is a rather ridiculous analogy, but he likes it because it illustrates several important principles with such visceral imagery. Juno has always felt sorry for the cat, living on the brink of reality as it did.

Now, she thinks, she knows what it feels like, in the moment just before the box is opened. It is everything at once, all possible futures spiraling out from this one point like that hologram in that crowded lecture hall all those years ago; so which is it, the professor is asking, alive or dead? Or both in equal probability? Only here the probability is not equal; it is some complicated function that she cannot even begin to fathom, and she should stop trying to formulate it and make an observation, because really the function hardly matters at this point.

Juno brings the ship around in a sweeping arc back toward the Death Star. It looms again before her in the viewing window.

"Eclipse to Starkiller," she says, cool, professional. "The _Rogue Shadow _is in position; I repeat, the _Rogue Shadow_ is in position. Do you copy?"

There is silence on the other end of the comlink. She realizes that she is clutching the edge of control panel far too hard and loosens her grip; it is harder than she would have imagined.

Something explodes beneath her.

"Galen!" she gasps into the comlink, her heart in her throat—but there is no answer, _there is no answer_—

And beneath her fireworks are bursting forth from Palpatine's viewing room—the scanners pick up bursts of frenzied shouting and loud crackles of static—Juno, frantic, pulls the _Rogue Shadow _around, seeking for Kota and any sign of the rebels. The _Shadow_ can spy on any ship across the galaxy, but it is harder, it seems, to find a handful of rebels amongst the Imperial guards than it is to decrypt a coded message intercepted from a parsec away—

"Juno! Where are you?"

The burst of direct communication startles her. It is Kota. She hones in on the signal, tracks it down, swings the ship around—

"I'm coming," she says. And then: "Is Galen there?"

A pause. She brings the ship down, the boarding ramp opening up; her heart is hammering madly against her ribs. But she is proud of herself—she does not so much as sigh when the response comes.

"Yes," Kota says tersely. "Hurry."

And then there is no more time to think.

It is a rough landing and a rougher take-off; the boarding ramp has barely retracted before Juno is firing up the engines and bringing the ship careening away from the Death Star. "Secure yourselves," she snaps out over the intercom. "We are jumping to hyperspace in approximately two and a half minutes—"

Their shields are, suddenly, down twenty three percent.

She glances at the radar. There is a squadron of TIE fighters on their tail. Juno presses her lips together and thinks. The _Rogue Shadow_ is faster, but only barely, and she is carrying a cargo too precious for capture—

"Secure yourselves _now_," she orders. "We are making the jump in thirty-three seconds."

Another hit. The diagnostics are beeping furiously at her.

It is the riskiest thing she has ever done. There is no time to check over the jumps. She inputs the coordinates, frantically, and hopes the star maps have not changed; the _Rogue Shadow _shudders, hums—a barrage of fire comes from behind them—the ship _jumps_—

—and the serene blue of hyperspace engulfs them.

--

She does not see Galen until hours later, after repairs have been made and sleeping quarters assigned and rebel senators put to bed; he is in the training room, Kota tells her. Meditating.

But his eyes open the moment she appears in the doorway. "Juno," he says, standing.

"Galen." She hesitates. "Am I disturbing you?"

"No," he says. "Come in."

Juno steps into the room. "I heard you fought Vader," she says. "And Palpatine. How did you get away?"

"The ceiling collapsed on them," Galen admits. "We ran."

"Deus ex machina," Juno murmurs to herself. It is a fragment of a thought in a language eons dead, and it means: miracle. Because it is. He has come back; what are the odds?

"What?" He sounds puzzled.

She nearly smiles. He has fought Vader and Palpatine and come out alive—but here he is, alone with a girl, and he is shy and uncertain as any teenager. "I meant," Juno says, lightly. "I guess I'll have to live up to it after all."

She is always startled by how brave he is.

--

It is cold on the _Rogue Shadow_, but she is not cold when he kisses her.

* * *

A/N: So there you go. Three endings, huh? They're all true. :) Though I'll let you pick your favorite.

Whew! So glad to be done with this. ::is proud of self:: Thanks to everyone for sticking with me, and special thanks to all my reviewers! Your comments are awesome and I couldn't have done this without your encouragement.


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